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Fire Emblem: Heroes - Everything we know

All the details on Nintendo's second mobile game

Fire Emblem: Heroes - Everything we know
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| Fire Emblem: Heroes

Following hot on the heels (well, a month and a half later) of Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem: Heroes will be Nintendo's second ever mobile game.

So what can we expect to see from Fire Emblem: Heroes when it hits the App Store and Google Play Store on February 2? Here's what we know so far, based on the details that have emerged to date from Nintendo and other online reports.

It's Fire Emblem condensed

Just as Super Mario Run condensed the Mario template into a recognisable but mobile-friendly format, so Fire Emblem: Heroes will bear a strong resemblance to the host game.

In case you're not familiar with the Fire Emblem series, it's essentially top-down turn-based strategy in a medieval fantasy setting, with a strong emphasis on building an army from loads of distinctive heroes.

Fire Emblem: Heroes will feature familiar turn-based combat - but with massively reduced, 6x8 single-screen levels.

It's free to play

Let's get that one out of the way early doors. If you're one of those people who raged against having to pay a princely £8 to unlock Super Mario Run, you'll be delighted to hear that Nintendo has gone with a traditional freemium structure for Fire Emblem: Heroes.

You can technically play the entire game without paying a penny, but you'll be bumping up against some familiar barriers. Primarily you have the orb currency, which enables you to summon new heroes to your team.

It costs five orbs to unlock a random hero, whilst unlocking subsequent heroes in a row will cost you fewer orbs. Those orbs will also enable you to do more things, which we'll discuss in a bit.

Stamina bar

Here's another freemium trope that's present in Fire Emblem: Heroes - your team has a stamina bar that is depleted by fighting battles. Once depleted, you won't be able to fight.

This bar regenerates at a rate of one point per five minutes. Or, of course, you can use one of those purchased orbs to refill instantly.

The triangle is intact

At the heart of Fire Emblem's battle system is the weapon triangle. This is a simple ‘rock-paper-scissors' type system that sees swords beating axes, axes beating lances, and lances beat swords.

It means you have to weigh up which fights to pick and how to form your pint-sized army.

Here in Fire Emblem: Heroes, the weapon triangle is always visible on lower right of screen. Because, as we all know, us mobile gamers are stoopid.

Unlike in mainline Fire Emblem games, your weapons don't deplete over time or need replacing.

Tap or drag units

Moving your units in Fire Emblem: Heroes can be done in two ways. You can either tap on them and then where you want them to move to, or you can drag your heroes directly into position.

Dragging over enemies will have your unit attack. Rather smartly, dragging ranged units over enemies will see them automatically positioned at the appropriate distance.

Death is not the end

One of the key differences from recent Fire Emblem games is that there's no perma-death for characters. In the mainline series, once one of your heroes snuffs it on the battle field, that's it - they're out. This served to tie you to your units like few other strategy games.

That's not the case in Fire Emblem: Heroes. Indeed, wiping out on a level is anything but the end.

You'll get the option to Continue or Give-up. Give Up means you can have another crack at the level from the start, reselecting your team into the bargain. Continue, however, lets you to use an Orb (that aforementioned currency) to revive all of your downed allies, restore all their HP, enable them to move, and charge up all their specials. This sounds suspiciously like pay to win to us, but we'll have to wait and see in the final game.

Levelling up

In between battles you'll get to improve your characters in a number of ways. There will be skill points that you can earn through using a particular character, which can then be put towards new weapons or abilities.

You can also use shards to upgrade characters up to level 19, and then crystals for characters of level 20 and above. You can't buy crystals or shards with money, though - they have to be obtained from the game's Training Tower mode.

Difficulty level

There are three difficulty levels for every map in the game's Story mode - Normal, Hard and Lunatic. You'll need to play through a set of levels on one difficulty setting to unlock the next. Harder levels require more stamina.

Special Maps

Fire Emblem: Heroes provides Daily Maps, which are fresh one-off challenge maps that are the same for everyone - think Spelunky's Daily Challenge, or the many games that have since aped that idea. Defeating the heroes in this mode unlocks them for use in the rest of the game.

Arena mode

The game's Arena mode provides a kind of asynchronous sort-of-multiplayer option. You're not actually battling against other players directly, but you are battling against their assembled team.

You'll be ranked across a series of battles, or ‘seasons,' and the higher the rank at the end of the season, the better the reward.

In order to engage in these Arena battles you'll need to use your duelling sword currency. You're given three per day, and it costs one sword per battle. Of course, you can also use that orb currency to buy more swords and extend your run of battles (which snags you more rewards).

A warrior's home is their Castle

Just as Super Mario Run gives you a little Toad kingdom to build up, Fire Emblem: Heroes gives you your own castle. This home screen presents a random assortment of your collected heroes, all standing around and ready to chew the fat. You can upgrade this castle using orbs, which confers bonus experience and other advantages.

Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.